HCI in the developing world

Indra’s Net

Authors:
Susan Dray, David Siegel, Paula Kotzé

Introduction

There is a legend that once, long ago, a net was thrown over
all the peoples of the world. This net had bells sewn on at every
junction, so that the movement of any person in any place would
set the bells jingling, reminding all people of their connection
to each other. In the Indian version of this legend, this is
Indra’s Netand instead of bells, it is jewels which are
sewn into the net. When the net is moved, each jewel glimmers,
reflecting the beauty of all. How fitting that, today, the
netthis time the Internetshould now span the globe,
reminding us of our interconnectedness with the world!

But for many in the so-called "developing world,"
the Internet remains a distant or even unknown thing. Indeed, the
technology and infrastructure that underlies much of the success
of the "developed world" is all but nonexistent in many
places. For instance, in Africa, where the gulf is probably the
widest today, estimates for access to computers range from 1 in
130 [8] to as few as three per 1000 in
sub-Saharan Africa [1]. Many of these computers
are used by multiple people, but even so, optimistic estimates
suggest that only 1 in 160 use the Internet [1].
Globally, Internet use is still "disproportionately white,
educated and affluent" [1]. The gap in
access to information and communication technologies (ICTs)
between the developed and the so-called developing world is huge.
Even within developing countries, the gap between the most
affluent and educated (who can be as technologically
"enfranchised" as the inhabitants of California or
Germany) and the poor is enormous. And, despite efforts to
address it, the disparity in Internet usage is increasing over
time. Even though all countries, even the poorest, are increasing
their use of ICTs, the world’s richest countries, the so-called
"information-haves," are increasing their use at much
faster rates. At the same time, people in information-rich
countries can afford to upgrade, expand, and develop additional
skills with new technologies, further exacerbating the disparity.
As a result, "the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer" as the digital divide grows [2,
4].

So what does this have to do with us, as Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI) professionals? Of course the digital divide is
not simply a problem of human-computer interaction. It reflects
profound inequalities in the distribution of wealth, educational
opportunity, and technology infrastructure. However, initiatives
to address the digital divide will have to also address those
issues that are central concerns of HCI: How to improve the fit
between technology, specific human needs, and human contexts; how
to design technology to facilitate human interaction with it; and
how best to manage the process of technology introduction.

Despite the small numbers of HCI people in the developing
world, they are generating a large number of innovative ideas and
important projects. As believers in and practitioners of
user-centered design (UCD), they are acting as agents of
changeempowering users in traditionally under-served or
even un-served populations, finding ways to leverage this
empowerment to expand the opportunities available to those whose
voices are rarely heard, and having an impact on the future
directions, not only of technology, but of their nations.

This special issue of interactions is devoted to
sharing a small sample of the important HCI work happening in the
developing world. The idea for this issue grew out of the
Development Consortium for South Africa which took place at CHI
2002 in Minneapolis, chaired by Jacques Hugo and Theo Bothma. For
this issue, however, we have expanded the focus to include
colleagues from India, Brazil, and China. As we learned about
these and other projects, we found a wonderful richness and
diversity of experience.

The Complex Technology Landscape

While the digital divide is one important concern, it is not
the only reason to be interested in and supportive of HCI work in
the developing world. HCI in the developing world is not merely
about dealing with technological deprivation. For example, in the
global economy, technologies originating in the developed
countries are expanding into the developing world and need to be
adapted to a wider range of users and situations than ever
before. Exports from the developed world may not fit so well into
the culture of other countries. They may need tailoring of
functionality, content, visual design, and/or overall interaction
design to work in their users’ contexts. We (Dray and Siegel) saw
a fairly simple example of this when working with a client who
produced a complex and sensitive system that integrated
information processing with electro-mechanical peripheral
devices. The engineers who produced this device were accustomed
to working in a dust-free, climate-controlled environment, and
envisioned their system being used in corporate or industrial
settings, not too different from what they were familiar with.
They discovered from international user studies that some of
their customers were using their devices in tents in hot, dusty,
desert environments, far from sources of replacement parts and
repair technicians. It is questionable whether the HCI community
based in the developed world can ever obtain the necessary
knowledge of local users around the world. We need HCI partners
in the developing world to help us understand their special
circumstances and their users.

We need HCI partners in the developing world
to help us understand their special circumstances and their
users.

The need for technology to work internationally is not limited
to products exported from the developed world. Despite the
persistent digital divide, the evolution and proliferation of
ICTs is in fact increasingly knitting together people from
diverse backgrounds and contexts. As Derrick Cogburn discusses in
his article in this issue, the people doing geographically
distributed work in the global economy are linked by information
systems, which must work for users from different backgrounds,
cultures, and contexts. These systems must also take into account
the needs created by the new social dynamics of distributed
work.

Another technology trend, which Derrick refers to, is the
growing international trade in services, including information
services. Specifically, services and information systems which
will be utilized by users in the developed world are being
designed and built in the developing world. This creates a number
of challenges for the design and development process, challenges
that HCI is particularly attuned to. For example, Pradeep Henry’s
article discusses the challenges of providing design input into
software development projects being carried out in India for
offshore customers. He also describes the approaches that he and
his team at Cognizant have adopted to deal with such challenges,
such as geographical dispersal of the team and geographical
separation from users.

The dominant technology platforms, or the mix of platforms in
use in different countries, or among different socio-economic
groups within countries differ from what people in the developed
world may assume. For example, many factors in some countries
promote the adoption of less expensive ICTs, such as cell phones.
In fact, in many or most "developing" countries, cell
phone penetration far exceeds computer penetration. Therefore,
HCI professionals may focus on different types of interface
design and become specialists in the UCD challenges associated
with these technologies, such as the very small displays on cell
phones. Key advances in these domains may be very likely to
emerge from the developing world. In this issue, Gary Marsden
describes interesting work that his group at the University of
Cape Town has done in this area, responding to the importance of
cell phone technology in the South African context.

HCI in Technology Initiatives for Indigenous Development

There are a large number of fascinating projects related to
development of ICTs for indigenous use in developing countries,
some of which we have learned about through our work on this
issue. There is a wide range of efforts under way to develop
useful systems on a variety of platforms, such as kiosks, cell
phones, PDAs and other handheld devices, as well as desktop
computers. Interface paradigms that people in the developed world
may take for granted may not be appropriate or workable for these
projects. The result is a great deal of HCI creativity. The
HISAAB project in India is developing computer systems to support
village collectives engaged in microfinance initiatives. It is a
joint project of Media Lab Asia (MIT) and the India-based HCI
professionals from Human Factors International. (Thanks to Apala
Chavran for bringing this to our attention.) You can read about
this project and their user-centered design activities at the two
HISAAB Web sites listed in the References [5,
6]. For several years, Hewlett-Packard has
supported what they call world e-inclusion projects aimed at
using appropriate information technologies to foster economic
development [7]. For example, one of these, the
Digital Garage, is a project in São Paulo, Brazil which
teaches underprivileged youth how to use a wide range of computer
equipment. In this environment, they learn from a team of
technical experts who help them develop their own creative
projects in a safe environment. Another, the Dikhatole Digital
Village, will provide access and training in use of the Internet
to residents of a township east of Johannesburg, South Africa
[7,10].

HCI has a crucial role to play in bridging
the meta-goals of national development and the needs of actual
users.

These projects are often motivated partly or largely by the
noble desire to use technology to advance social and economic
development. The fact that they are aimed at groups that are so
obviously disenfranchised technologically can put HCI on center
stage in these efforts. When designing a system for a user group
that has no computer experience and who may be marginally
literate, it is hard to overlook the need for user-centered
design (as is all too often the case when designers let
themselves off the hook for bad design by relying on their users’
presumed familiarity with similar systems). However, development
projects motivated by "higher goals" such as general
economic development, run the risks of all top-down design
efforts, namely, that the goals of the sponsoring authority are
often not the same as the more concrete and immediate goals of
the end users. It is understandable that governments and agencies
would see technological development as an essential step in
national development and as an inherent good, but we all know
situations where "throwing technology at a problem"
simply resulted in un-used systems, because the systems did not
meet real users’ immediate needs or did not fit the usage
context. HCI has a crucial role to play in bridging the
meta-goals of national development and the needs of actual users.
Clarisse de Sousa, Raquel O. Prates, and Simone Barbosa tell the
story of how and why they had to introduce UCD approaches into a
project that was a response to a national mandate.

The Challenge of Limited HCI Resources

Many of us in HCI struggle with getting the ear of "the
powers that be" in order to get into development processes
at the right time to make a contribution to system design and
development. In many cases, we must educate developers, managers,
or funding bodies, to make the case that a focus on the user is
critical-and to illustrate how we can do this in time- and
cost-effective ways to improve design. Most of us feel that there
are not enough HCI people and not sufficient resources to have
the full impact that we know we could and should have.

The challenge of resources takes on new meaning in the
developing world. The demographics of the HCI communities in
"developing" countries differ in interesting ways from
those in developed countries, and from each other. In countries
where HCI is primarily an academic endeavor, such as South
Africa, there are persistent questions about "What happens
to our graduates? What can they do when there are no HCI jobs in
industry?" It also may lead to somewhat more applied
research being conducted in academic settings, as these
researchers seek to balance their theoretical interests with the
pressing "real world" needs of their countries. In
other countries where there is not a strong academic HCI
community, such as India, a very different set of questions
arises including "Where can we get (more) training in HCI?
Who can do the basic research needed to advance HCI in our
context? How will we recruit and train additional HCI
professionals? How can we get universities interested in this
interdisciplinary area to build competence and excellence in
HCI?"

HCI communities in the developing world are
very small and may be isolated geographically from each
other.

The issue of "critical mass" is an important one,
since the HCI communities in the developing world are very small
and may be isolated geographically from each other. HCI is an
interdisciplinary profession and when there’s a very small
community, it can be hard to have enough people from all the
different disciplines in HCI, such as psychology or anthropology,
to create a truly interdisciplinary perspective. To date, most
HCI people in the "developing" world are computer
scientists and most HCI programs are in computer science
departments, so the methodologies of social sciences (e.g.,
statistics and statistical reasoning, experimental design,
ethnography, etc.) are not as well known. This is an area where
more open dialogue across boundariesboth geographic and
philosophicalis important to support HCI community growth
and development. The range of technology and interface issues
that the HCI community addresses is huge, with tremendous
cross-fertilization. This cross-fertilization can be more
difficult to achieve in a small, geographically isolated
professional community, as well.

These issues are addressed in the separate articles by Pradeep
Henry and Jian Wang. Pradeep also discusses the efforts of the
HCI group at Cognizant to maximize their impact with limited
resources.

Diversity of Language and Mental Models

Although there are certainly similarities in the challenges we
face, there are also many very significant and interesting
differences which show up when you compare the research focuses
between HCI in the developed and developing worlds, as well as
how HCI in the developing world responds to the issues closest to
home. Some examples of these have to do with research on language
and mental models of non-western users. For many populations in
these countries, many of the interface paradigms considered
"standard" in the developed world simply are not
applicable. Therefore, HCI professionals must adopt new and
innovative approaches which are tailored to the resources and
culture in which they work. By doing so, they may expand the
envelope for everyone, including people in technology-rich
locations.

Literacy and broader linguistics issues are examples of a
research domain which is a "specialty" of developing
countries. "Computer literacy" is not even the first
challengethe basic skill of reading is. Most user
interfaces today require at least a basic grasp of written
language. While this is a "given" in many
"developed" countries, this cannot be assumed in most
"developing" parts of the world. As recently as 2000,
UNESCO estimated that more than half of young and adult
populations in many developing countries are illiterate, with
two-thirds of these being girls and women. Although this number
has been declining in some regions, estimates are that almost 25
percent of the world’s population is still illiterate
[9]. When we expand the concept of literacy to
include computer literacy, the figures will be even less
favorable. Obviously, interface designs that are based on
assumptions about shared knowledge of standard interface
paradigms are likely to fail, or reach only very limited
audiences.

An example of innovative work on development of interfaces for
non-literate users is provided by Edwin Blake and his group of
the University of Cape Town [3], and also
presented at the Development Consortium at CHI 2002. They worked
closely with expert South African San (Bushman) trackers,
developing a palm-based system for tracking animals, utilizing
the trackers’ incredibly rich knowledge of animals and animal
behavior. This device, called the CyberTracker, was developed in
a user-centered, iterative design process, and was used
experimentally in several South African wildlife conservation
parks. Its design makes limited use of words, heavy use of
images, and organizes information in a non-hierarchical manner.
The CyberTracker has allowed the wildlife management and
conservation community access to the skills and knowledge of
these trackers, despite their functional illiteracy. This project
has led not only to increased recognition for these trackers’
skills, but also to a more systematic and valuable utilization of
these skills by the conservation managers of the national
parks.

If we are to bring the largest number of groups into the
technology revolution, we must recognize that there are profound
differences among the world’s languages, at the level of how the
structure of the language codes information. The languages of the
developed world do not provide a universal model. The field of
natural language interfaces can only benefit from broadening the
spectrum of languages we pay attention to. The article in this
issue by Laurette Pretorius and Sonja Bosch gives an idea of the
magnitude of basic linguistic research needed to develop language
parsers for neglected languages, such as the Bantu languages.
There are also profound differences among writing systems in
different countries, which introduce challenges for text entry,
and call for more specialized interface issues such as
handwriting recognition. In his article, Jian Wang describes some
of the work that has been done in China to develop methods for
text input adapted to the Chinese idiographic writing system, in
addition to giving an overview of the current state of
development of HCI in China.

Differences in how languages structure information relate to
differences in how people organize information mentally. This
provides a natural bridge into the cross-cultural study of mental
models. Obviously, differences in how people mentally organize
their world are difficult to assess, and likely to be related to
complex differences in culture, experience, education,
environment, and common concerns. Identifying the user interface
(UI) design implications of such differences may not only help in
developing usable technology for more diverse groups, but may
also ultimately help spur UI innovations. It stands to reason
that research into this challenging area is likely to be the most
productive when we can learn about people from the most diverse
backgrounds possible. Obviously, the developing world provides a
fertile field for such work. The article by Marion Walton and
Vera Vukovic in this issue comes out of this focus in HCI.

Final Words

There are many lessons to be learned herefor all of us
in HCI, regardless of whether we live in Minneapolis, Munich,
Montevideo, Mumbai, Melbourne, Mafikeng, or Mombassa. As editors,
we have learned a lot from these authors, and we hope you share
our excitement as you read of their insights and solutions to
incredibly complex problems in HCI, and take away lessons for
your own work, just as we did.

Technology can knit the world together or it can create a
schism. HCI has a key role in bringing people together, no matter
where they live. Since HCI professionals all over the world find
themselves facing some of the same challenges, we can and must
support and learn from each other, sharing the things which work
for each of us, and suggesting alternatives that others may not
have yet tried. The promise of HCI as a global endeavor is one
reason that HCI in the developing world matters. But another is
that HCI practitioners everywhere stand to learn from the efforts
of their developing world colleagues as they respond to their
particular challenges.

10. UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs. South Africa: Bridging the digital divide
and bringing hope, 2002.
www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28161

Authors

Susan Dray is President and David Siegel is Vice President
of Dray & Associates, Inc., a user-centered design consulting
firm. Their firm has worked in 17 countries, which has
contributed to their international perspective on HCI. Susan was
a keynote speaker at CHI-SA in 2001, and at the South African
Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists
(SAICSIT) Conference in 2002. They have recently contributed a
chapter on doing international usability research to a
forthcoming volume tentatively entitled Cross-cultural User
Interface Design, edited by Nuray Aykin, and scheduled for
publication by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in Summer, 2003. They
are also co-editors of interactions’ Business Column. David and
Susan both have Ph.D.‘s in Psychology from UCLA. Susan is a
Board-certified Human Factors Professional.

Paula Kotzé is Professor, Head of Department of
Computer Science and Information Systems, and Director for the
Centre for Software Engineering at the University of South
Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science with specialization
in HCI from the University of York (UK) and various other
qualifications in Computer Science, Psychology and Education from
institutions in South Africa. Her current interests include
domain modeling of interactive systems (including formal
mathematical modeling), user interfaces and authoring
environments for e-learning, multicultural issues, as well as
user interfaces for those with severe physical
disabilities.

Footnotes

A note about terms:
We have used the terms "so-called developing/developed
world" and "developing" world in this article
interchangeably. We are aware that many in this part of the world
find the term "developing" to be somewhat negative or
pejorative, in part because it is sometimes used with value
judgments of lesser worth by those in the so-called
"developed" world. We are using the terms simply as
descriptors, with no value judgment implied.

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